


One Piece Ficlets

by ThisCat



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, One Shot Collection, Wordcount: 100-1.000
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 11,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24412213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThisCat/pseuds/ThisCat
Summary: Just a collection of ficlets too short to post on their own. Mostly written on my phone in response to character prompts.Will have: Friendship, musing, poetic imagery, headcanons. Mostly featuring the Straw Hat crew but with the occational other character.
Comments: 60
Kudos: 57





	1. Nami, Stargazing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Nami + stargazing

Nami has the watch tonight.

Zoro’s here too, technically. There’s always at least two people up, just in case, to watch each other’s backs and keep an eye out for what the other’s missed, but right now, he’s just here on a technicality.

She knows he'll wake up in an instant if something’s wrong, so she lets him sleep.

The wind is dead around them. The sails hang limp and the sea is a mirror surface. It reflects the waning moon and the star-speckled sky, making it seem like they’re floating in space.

She couldn’t possibly miss an ship approaching, like this. It’s safe. The air is warm.

For once, it’s quiet, and she doesn’t want to disturb it.

Climbing to the roof of the crow’s nest, she lies back and looks at the stars.

When she was little, Bellemere would sit with her and Nojiko in the garden some late summer nights and point out the constellations. Back home, she can name them all.

It’s a measure of how far from home she is, that most of these are unknown to her.

She traces shapes in the sky above, mapping out a different sea, and she wonders at the names for them, wonders if they’re gods or beasts, heroes or maidens.

Robin will know, most likely. Maybe she’ll ask tomorrow.

For now, Nami watches a star shoot across the vast, uncharted celestial ocean, and she is home.


	2. Nami, Depths of the Ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Nami, depths of the ocean

Nami can sail any sea. She takes pride in that. She was the best of the best even before, and after two years in the sky, immersed in the very wind, she’s only gotten better.

Nami can sail any sea. Because she has to. Because that’s where they’re going. Everywhere.

She can sail the calmer blues, the wild currents of Paradise and the wispy whites of the sky. She’s prepared for the wilder reaches of the New World. No matter what waters they’re heading for, she can sail them.

And now they’re heading down, into the dark depths of the sea.

Nami knows currents, but she’s one with the wind, knows the storms and breezes like siblings. The deep sea deprives her of this.

It’s just another challenge, and one she is ready for, but she can’t help a moment of trepidation as the ocean closes around them, cuts them off from the air she’s known all her life.

But their course is clear and the crew is with her, the captain grinning like there’s no question of whether she can find the way or not.

Because there isn’t.

She is Nami. She is the navigator. If they’re heading down, she will take them to the depths.


	3. Nami, Chains and Bonds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Nami, chains & bonds

Nami knows chains, knows what it means to be bound.

It doesn’t always mean a locked door.

Arlong Park is always open to her. She can come and go as she please, set sail for days or weeks at a time and come back to no complaints, no questions of where she’s been.

They haven’t physically kept her from leaving since she was a child, and even back then, only rarely. Only when she got… uncooperative.

They don’t have to. She’s still bound.

As long as her deal with Arlong stands, she’s bound.

As long as her sister and father-figure live, she’s bound.

As long as Bellemere lies cold in the ground, and her murderer walks the earth she once walked, Nami is bound.

And as long as she is bound, she will return, and she will work and bleed and dance for the man who holds the chain.

They let her go as she pleases, because her chains are inked into her skin, are anchored in her heart, and she knows it.

She knows chains.

They have locks, and she does not have the key.


	4. Robin, Dust and Stone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Straw Hats, "You have made flowers grow where I cultivated dust and stones"  
> (Wheel of Time quote)

Words are… difficult, sometimes.

Robin knows words. She reads them every day. She knows them and she loves them, loves the power they hold, loves the way they carry form and colour with them, carry memories for those who cannot remember for themselves.

She reads herself away to ancient lands, and she marvels at the magic of a page.

But words are hard, when she does not have them in front of her.

Robin knows the power of words. They have been her shield for years and years, a shell of bargains and cruelty, of promises set up so that when they are broken, she can let go cleanly.

Years and years, and she has hidden, and formed her words to keep herself safe.

These are words she knows. Words of betrayal, of breaking. They are always there for her to use.

But these are not the words she needs. Her shield is pointless here, her words to set up distance no longer needed.

Her Captain breaks no promises, and so she does not need to run.

Robin knows the force of words, but hers are all planned out in advance, and the ones she has are not the ones she needs here. These people deserve words from her heart, and she has not looked there for so long, she does not know what she will find.

But she is patient, and she can search.

Robin knows the power words have. She knows a single poem carries more truth than a thousand portraits, and she can read a thousand poems, until she finds the words she needs.

When she does, they are not listening.

They do not need to be. This is her truth, and it is important. The air will listen.

“I have been cold,” she begins.

“I have been cold, dark dust, and I have tilled the stones and sown ashes.

“I have been cold, and dark, and scared.

“But you fell like rain.

“And then you fell like sunlight.

“You have grown flowers where I gathered dust and stones.

“The packed dirt of my garden crumbles to your sprouting leaves.

“I was cold.

“You have brought me warmth.

“I will no longer live without it.”


	5. Brook, Touch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: any straw hat, something about touch/the sense of feeling something with your hands

Bone slides against wood.

It’s all the sense he has left now.

Bone slides against rotting wood and tattered clothes.

The fog wraps around his ribs, seeps through the holes in his skull. He’s long since lost track of what’s real.

Bone slides against the neck of his violin. Dry. Cold.

He remembers skin. Remembers heat, and touch. Remembers the warmth of a shoulder leaning against him.

Bone slides against bone. The bow slides over strings.

He can still feel, still touch, but his fingertips are no longer there. It’s all phantom sensation. All ghosts. Fading memories.

Bow slides over strings, makes them sing. Bones are real. The music is real.

The memory of skin is just a dream.

For the length of a song, Brook is here, in his bony body, almost at home, almost alive.

Then the song ends.

Bone slides against bone. What’s left of a friend. He imagines heat under imagined fingertips.

Bone slides over porcelain. The cup is empty. He imagines tea heating an imagined tongue.

He is almost present.

And.

And!

And then.

Bone slides over skin.

A light touch. A shoulder bumping into him.

A voice and a laugh. Light. Warmth.

And he has fingertips. And he can feel everything.

And Brook is alive.


	6. Nami, Treat Yourself

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Any strawhat, treat yourself

There’s always the guilt, when Nami spends money.

“You have to treat yourself sometimes,” Bellemere used to say, but they couldn’t, usually. There were never the means, never the money. Only very rarely did they have enough for anything extra.

Then she had money, from other people’s pockets and other people’s ships, gained through blood and tears and sweat, but…

“Treat yourself. Buy that dress, get a snack, take a rest.”

And she wants to. She wants it so much. Wants to smell fresh cotton and strut like she’s worth as much as she is.

But it’s not her money. She needs it. Every single beli. It’s for her home.

She can’t spend it.

Then she can.

The dress in the window is beautiful. It would flatter her perfectly.

Treat yourself, hm?

But the money she saves is so necessary. It has to feed the crew, last for repairs and necessities and everything a family like theirs needs to survive.

No one else is going to take care. No one else really gets it, but every time she hands over a fistful of cash, there’s the guilt, and the shame and the bitterness.

She shouldn’t. She really shouldn’t.

But it is very pretty.

And she’s a pirate.

Screw ‘should’, she figures, and enters the shop anyway.


	7. Bellemere, Supposed to Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Bellemere, who I was supposed to be

“Excuse me, young lady, are you supposed to be doing that?”

Bellemere is twelve, and she’s, strictly speaking, not supposed to be in the shop. Because it’s closed, and she wasn’t planning to pay anyway.

“Nope!” she tells the owner, who’s looming over her. Then she laughs, kicks him in the shin and runs out with her pockets full of stolen snacks.

People keep telling her what she’s supposed to be doing. What she’s supposed to _be_.

As far as she can tell, none of their options are options.

She doesn’t actually want to be stealing, but she’s so bored, and it’s so easy. She can’t sit still, and she’s, well, she’s hungry, so she does what she shouldn’t because she doesn’t know what she should.

She wants to do something useful, really, but there’s never anything.

In the season, she can help out at the orchard, at least. Sometimes there’s something like that, but while it’s useful, it’s so boring, and she’s always left with nothing to do afterwards anyway.

It’s not like anyone has the time to pay attention to her. If she wants attention, she has to grab it.

But it’s not about that either. Really, she wants to fight someone. She wants to protect people, with her fists, preferably. She wants people to stop telling her what she’s supposed to be, because she doesn’t know, but she knows it’s not what they’re suggesting.

Housewives don’t punch people. They do shit like getting married, and clean the house. Bellemere wants to punch people.

That’s all she knows this far.

The marine recruiter sailing through when she’s sixteen is a blessing. She doesn’t think twice about it, barely tells anyone where she’s going before she boards the ship and leaves.

She doesn’t know if this is what she’s supposed to be doing either, but it’s closer, she’s sure.

This is important, and she’s good at it, and it’s fun. And then she starts having people rely on her, need her to keep her safe, and that, that’s the closest she’s gotten yet.

Is this where she’s supposed to be? On the front lines, keeping everyone behind her safe?

She wants to believe so.

But she never signed up for war.

This isn’t protecting people anymore. She doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be, but this isn’t it.

This is murder, is death and destruction and blood and despair and she can’t, she can’t!

A child is crying, somewhere out there. Someone needs help, and Bellemere is still alive.

“Who am I supposed to be?” she asks herself, and suddenly she realizes it’s been eight years since the last time she asked.

She used to ask that question every day, but now?

She looks at her daughters, struggling, but alive and happy, and she realizes she’s found her answer.


	8. Shirahoshi, Sunrises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Shirahoshi, never believed in sunrises

Shirahoshi knows about the Sun.

That, at least, she thinks is real. It must be. Mother told her, after all, and Mother saw it once.

It was when Shirahoshi was very young, and much smaller than she is now. She asked why the light dims at night though it shines at day.

It’s because of the Sun, Mother explained. Far, far above, over the Surface, a bright, beautiful light sails overhead and brings life to the world, but at night it dips below the sea and so it cannot shine upon them.

They are below the sea as well, Shirahoshi wondered as a child. So why can’t they see the Sun then?

But Mother explained that the Sun passes below even the planet itself, as it is so far away, so far above and so far below. That’s why they can’t see it.

Mother told it so beautifully.

If Mother was still here, Shirahoshi would ask her so many things about the Sun. What does it look like? What does it feel like? What does it sound and smell like? How far up must you swim before you can touch it, and what would happen if you did?

But Mother isn’t here, and Shirahoshi only has other people’s stories.

Trapped between these walls to keep her safe, Shirahoshi only has stories of most things. Megalo tells her about the world outside, and her father and brothers and sometimes even the guards tell her more. What’s happening on Fishman Island, and sometimes, what exists above.

When she is younger, she believes it all unquestionably. If they say something exists, then of course it exists.

As she gets older, she learns that some stories are only stories, and it gets harder.

She doesn’t believe anyone would lie to her, but she thinks sometimes they forget she can’t tell, that she has no way to know what is true and what is not outside these walls.

She does not want to ask. Not when they go to this trouble to come and tell her stories, so she’s left guessing.

She hopes forests are real. They sound like something that could be.

Clouds and Stars, too, maybe even the Moon, though she’s not sure about that. The Sky always seems too incredible to be the way they speak of it.

Sunrises seem altogether too much.

That there is such a thing as a Horizon, and that when the Sun passes it, the Sky is set on fire, painted red and gold, and pink like her own scales.

She wishes it was true, but she never truly believed it.

Then morning comes, on the Surface, and she sees it with her own two eyes. And she never wants it to end.


	9. Usopp, Can't Turn Back

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Usopp, can't turn back

Usopp wants to be brave. Sometimes, he even thinks he is.

It means he’ll decide he has to do something, and then he jumps in with both legs, and when his courage fails him, three seconds later, there’s no way back.

He goes down the steepest hills on his rickety sled, and doesn’t realize it’s far too dangerous until he can’t stop anymore.

That one nets him a broken bone.

He swears to the kids in the village that he’ll sneak onto the grounds of the big mansion, because there’s a princess in need of rescue, and he only chickens out after, when he can’t possibly go back on his promise.

That one nets him a friend, somehow.

He’s standing on the deck of the Going Merry, his island already out of sight, by the time realization slowly descends that there’s no turning back now. He can’t. Ever.

Whatever happens now, he’s stuck with it.

He makes his decisions, and he might regret them later, but he won’t go back on them.

He can’t go back on them. It’s the only kind of bravery he has.

He breaks every bone in his body in Alabasta, fighting for his captain’s honour, and it’s more of the same. He made his decision, so he has to do it. There’s no way back, no way out but through.

(He doesn’t notice the way regret doesn’t hit, this time, doesn’t notice the way he doesn’t even begin to chicken out, for the first time in his life. He doesn’t notice he’s gotten stronger, and Chopper hasn’t known him long enough to tell, either.)

Usopp is brave in moments. The only courage he has after that is in sticking to his guns.

There’s never any way back.

He wants to go home, so many times, but that would be his final act of cowardice, worse than anything he’s done before.

Fighting Luffy isn’t about going home, it’s about….

Himself.

Standing up for himself, for once.

It’s still more of the same. It’s Usopp, making a decision, jumping in with both legs and following through.

And then there’s no way back from that, either.

It hurts so much he’s shaking, to leave them, but he can’t turn back. It’s the only bravery he has.

Isn’t it?

Isn’t it?

Usopp makes a decision, and he sticks to it. He goes to Enies Lobby, and the island itself blows up behind them. There’s no way back, no way out but through.

Luffy tells him to jump, and he jumps in with both feet, a flag burns on its pole, and he doesn’t regret it.

There’s no need for a way back. Usopp isn’t looking. Not for this.

But for something else.

He turns around.

Sometimes, to be brave, it turns out, you have to turn back.

And sometimes, even if you’ve jumped in with both your legs, you can find an outstretched hand to pull you out.


	10. Robin, Glass Half Full

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Robin, glass half full

Robin considers the glass standing on the little table next to her lounge chair.

Fresh, ice cold orange juice. The perfect drink for a day such as this.

Well, it would’ve been, at least. The book she’s currently reading turned out to be a little more engaging than she expected. She seems to have forgotten the glass.

In fact, she can’t remember having taken a single sip for the last hour.

And yet it’s only half full.

Robin considers her glass of orange juice.

It’s not a problem, as such. Vitamins are important, but she doesn’t need more than what’s left. All the better that someone drank it while it was still cold and fresh.

It’s not a problem. It’s just odd.

Someone came up, right beside her, and stole her juice.

And she didn’t even notice.

For twenty years, she kept eyes on every surface, ears on every door, constantly vigilant for even the slightest problem.

Now, at home, even these boisterous boys can sneak up on her unaware.

Robin picks up her half-full glass of orange juice, and she smiles.


	11. Vivi, Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No prompt, just me writing stuff just because.  
> Warning for light Nami/Vivi shipping. The rest of the collection is likely to be 100% gen.

“Have you ever kissed anyone?” Vivi asks.

Nami gives her a weird look.

It _was_ an out of nowhere question. She should laugh it off. It’s stupid. Probably too personal.

“Have you?”

She should have expected that reply.

Vivi gives half a laugh and ducks her head, embarrassed. “Ah, once? On a dare. It was with my best friend, this boy I used to run around with. We were just kids, really. It didn’t mean anything. You?”

Nami looks away, looks up at the sky above them.

Maybe she shouldn’t have asked. Vivi doesn’t know these people. Doesn’t know where they come from or what they’ve been through, what they’ve done to end up pirates, what’s happened to them. It could be anything.

Stupid question. Stupid, stupid question. She wishes she could take it back.

“There was this girl,” Nami says, still looking up wistfully. “We used to work together sometimes, back when I was still a thief. We were… friends? I suppose?” She shrugs. “And things happen.”

That was far sweeter than Vivi feared.

Oh. “Girl?”

Nami meets her eyes. “That a problem?”

“Of course not,” Vivi says. “I was just….”

“Hm.” Nami smiles now, something small and smug. “You ever kissed a girl?”

“Oh. No. It wouldn’t be… proper.”

Vivi doesn’t quite know where to look. She’s learned to meet her conversation partner’s eyes, but Nami’s eyes feel dangerous, now.

“Your father wouldn’t like it, then.”

“My father?” That gives her pause. “No, I don’t think he’d care,” she says, trying to imagine what she could possibly do to make him think badly of her. “It’s just… I have my duty, and lately my interactions with good people have been limited. It’s never come up.”

“Would you?” Nami asks. “If you had the chance?”

She’s closer, now. Leaning in.

Her eyes are fixed on Vivi. Her smile shows a hint of teeth. It’s warm. Friendly, but not the least bit nice.

No, ‘nice’ is entirely the wrong word to describe the way Nami smiles now.

Vivi meets Nami’s eyes, and holds them.

“I… don’t see why not,” she says.


	12. Sanji, Stew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Sanji, stew

This was not… this wasn’t what he meant.

He didn’t mean to get _stuck_ here. Just….

He just wanted….

To not get them involved with this.

When Big Mom’s people came to Zou, the biggest concern was the immediate danger they posed, yes, but when he found out _why_ ….

How many years now, since he was that boy?

A lifetime and two deaths ago. One in a dungeon, one on a bare rock of an island.

(He nearly starved twice, and only once from lacking food.)

His mind’s circling.

There are bombs around his wrists and he’s stewing in his own thoughts.

Stew. That’s an idea.

He can do that in his sleep. Even this absentminded, he can’t fuck that up.

At least they were kind enough to give him a kitchen this time.

(As if these people know what kindness is. As if they know _shit_ about _anything_ ….)

Fully stocked. He can make whatever he wants.

The crew must be hungry by now, wherever they are.

He didn’t _mean_ for this to happen.

He just… he hasn’t thought about it. _Hadn’t_ thought about it. About this… place.

This collection of blood-related assholes vaguely resembling the idea of a family.

He should’ve picked a harder dish to make. His mind’s still circling.

As the years went on, with every passing day, these people have felt further away, less real, less like they’ve anything to do with him.

He’s not that boy. Not the smallest Vinsmoke child.

That child died in the dungeon. The last memories of him starved away on a rock in the sea.

Sanji is Sanji. It’s felt like a different world.

And then it wasn’t.

Isn’t.

Ans he didn’t want… never wanted those two worlds to exist at once.

He doesn’t want his family to meet these assholes, ever.

And when they could’ve, he… panicked.

He panicked, and left.

And now he’s stuck in the wrong world.

He never meant to. Never wanted this. Just wanted to tell them to fuck off, but he was…

Overconfident?

Not thinking clearly.

He’s still not thinking clearly.

He should’ve stayed with Nami, should’ve found a way. Should’ve waited for Luffy.

(God, he wants Luffy now.)

(He’s a child again and he wants to curl up and cry. Wants to be saved.)

(But he’s not a child and he doesn’t want his family anywhere _near_ this place.)

He’s not thinking clearly.

He won’t, until he’s back home.

But he’s stuck a world away from any home he ever had.

Sanji sits by the table, while the sun goes down, and slowly lets the untouched stew go cold.


	13. Ghost Broccoli

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: straw hats, "that one's cauliflower and _that_ one's broccoli"

“I know about vegetables. Look, that looks like a little tree, so it’s a broccoli, right?” Luffy says, pointing at the vegetable stands.

“No it’s not, it’s cauliflower. _That’s_ broccoli,” Usopp says, pointing too.

“But they both look like trees?”

“Yeah, but the cauliflower’s white.”

“Oh, so it’s a ghost.”

“Exactly! If you don’t harvest the broccoli quickly enough, they die, and then they come back to haunt you as cauliflower. Your only choice then is to harvest them under the moon while chanting prayers, or else, who _knows_ what’ll happen.”

“Is that stick a ghost too!?” Luffy asks, pointing at a white asparagus.

“Abso _lutely_ , and a particularly menacing one too, but don’t you worry, it’s neutralized now. Why, I was once witness to a terrible asparagus haunting back home! Let me tell you…”

“Sanji!” Luffy yells, turning to meet the eye of their cook. “We can’t eat ghost vegetables! That’s just wrong.”

Voice shaking, teeth grinding, Sanji replies, “I’m going to strangle you both.”


	14. Chopper, Triage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Chopper, triage

Chopper looks out over the field of fallen minks, and he doesn’t give himself time to despair.

He can cry later. For now, there’s work to be done, and he has a lot of stuff to figure out.

He’s never worked with minks before. Doctorine might have, but if she did, she never said. As isolated as they are, he’d believe it if even she never saw one.

She taught him to deal with different races in general, though. There are so many different people in the world, and Chopper is always prepared for the unfamiliar.

The physiologies of various humanoid races are largely the same, he knows. It’s the little differences that’ll trip you up, like how certain joints are configured or the exact rates of oxygen uptake.

But this is poison, and poison is poison no matter where your ears attach.

Chopper looks out over the field of fallen minks, and gets to work.

Organize them, first, into rough categories. The ones that can still walk and help the others. The ones that cannot, but are stable. The ones that need help _now_.

The ones that will never need help again.

There are too many in that last category.

He will cry for them later.

The lives of the living come first. Everything else must wait.


	15. Vivi, Hourglasses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Vivi, hourglasses

Vivi loves hourglasses.

She knows a good pocket watch is more useful, loves the clock tower in Alubarna too, as it coordinates the life of the city, but hourglasses hold the soul of Alabasta.

Glassmaking is an old art, here, and sand is more than plentiful. As far back as their history goes, hourglasses have always been used to measure time.

Every household has a few to keep track of their days. Frome simple ones to measure cooking times to elaborate heirloom ones to bring out once a year for holiday traditions.

The palace has hundreds, maybe thousands if you count the servants’ personal belongings, for every imaginable purpose. Some are always going, some have not been turned in decades.

The servants use them to keep track of shifts and tasks. Her father uses them to measure out the lengths of meetings, to ensure everyone who speaks with him are granted the same amount of his time. Vivi uses them whenever she can.

A pocket watch would work just as well, but the hands on a clock only symbolise time, the sand through an hourglass _is_ time, each grain of sand falling as it will, a piece of her home, a part of her soul, falling, faithfully, as sand always does.

Clocks are useful, but hourglasses are true.

(Miss Wednesday carries a pocket watch.)


	16. Whirlpools and Turtles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two prompts, fused.  
> 1: Straw Hats, turtles  
> 2: Robin, whirlpool

“Luffy what are you doing!” comes the much too familiar yell of Usopp’s voice across the Sunny’s deck, and all heads turn to see their captain go, deliberately, over the railing.

“Look, they’re turtles!” comes Luffy’s surprisingly undrowned answer.

The crew looks down into the water and there are, indeed, turtles, rising from the depths to surface beside the Sunny.

They’re large, but not too large, between two and three meters from head to tail and coloured a deep blue-green colour, like a piece of the ocean itself.

Luffy is standing safely on the back of one, looking very proud of himself and entirely charmed by the turtles.

“This is so cool! Come down here!” he says, jumping nimbly to the next turtle in line.

The turtle barely seems to notice him.

“Ugh, he’s going to fall in,” Nami says, her face in her hand. “Someone be ready to pull him out. Chopper!”

Their youngest crewmember follows the captain over the railing and lands a little more wobbly but safely on the back of a turtle. “This really is cool!” he exclaims, and then he calls out, for safety’s sake, “Sorry Nami! I just wanted to ask what they’re doing out here!”

Nami groans just in time to hear the sound of their resident lost swordsman jumping into the water behind her.

“What _now_?” she asks.

“Ah, there are more on this side,” says Robin, who is watching Zoro climb onto the back of an uncaring turtle. She is distracted, reminded of something, but she can’t place it just yet.

There really are more turtles surfacing on this side, and they are clearly forming a line, curving around the ship.

A circle? No, a spiral, she determines, going out from the ship in the middle.

Curious. Very curious.

Zoro turns to wave at Luffy and Chopper, who are both happily jumping from turtle to turtle.

“It’s like I’m walking on the water!” Luffy laughs. “Hey Usopp! Come down here!”

“Are you sure?” Usopp calls back anxiously, looking down at the turtles as if he’s scared they’ll rear up and eat him. “Do we even know if it’s safe? Hey, Jimbei,” he asks their newest crewmate. “Do you know what’s up with these things?”

“I don’t believe I have ever seen turtles quite like this, no,” Jimbei says, looking down at the water with a concerning amount of worry. “I couldn’t say. Something about this is unsettling me.”

Even more curious.

The number of turtles is still increasing. They’re almost circling the ship twice.

Robin hums while Usopp splutters his way into a panic attack and then out of it in the background. “Ah, Chopper?” she says. “Did you talk to the turtles?”

“I tried but they didn’t wanna answer,” Chopper says.

“Ehh, boring,” Luffy says, and then he skips another few turtles away. “Come on! Let’s see where they’re going!”

“Captain, wait,” Robin says.

He waits, impatiently, but obediently. He knows that this is her job. To know things. That she wouldn’t ask him to wait without a good reason.

And she has one. She watches the turtles rising faster and faster from below, now circling the ship four times, working on the fifth, and she has the strongest feeling she’s read about them once, that they’re bad news.

And then she remembers.

“They’re current-shelled turtles!” she calls, and the urgency in her voice makes everyone pay attention. “Get back on board! We must have sailed into their territory unintentionally, and now they’re making a whirlpool! They’re going to sink the ship!”

Nobody hesitates. Luffy grabs Zoro and Chopper to slingshot them back on deck, Nami starts barking orders, Jimbei takes the helm, Franky dives below deck for the engine room and Usopp has his second regularly scheduled panic attack.

The Coup de Burst is already half underway when the last turtle surfaces and the water starts moving all at once around them, rushing around and out and grabbing at the ship almost as if it is something alive, dragging them down towards oblivion.

And then they’re in the air, blasting turtles and current and whirlpool with the exhaust, breaking free and flying away.


	17. Aladine, Kelp

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Aladine, kelp

Kelp forests in shallow waters is one of Aladine’s favourite things.

Swimming through them is like nothing else. They fill the world up entirely, nothing but life in all directions. On the bottom below, floating on the surface above, suspended in the water all around him, fish and barnacles and crabs and vibrant kelp, reaching for the sun.

Sunlight tinges green as it passes through the forest, heating the water and making all this life possible.

It doesn’t belong to anyone, it just _is_.

(He knows what kelp forests look like when they belong to someone. When they’re cultivated in tanks with only the prettiest fish, as a decoration.)

(Kept by those who think people can be fish.)

Aladine likes kelp forests. They are wild, and free, and beautiful.


	18. Paulie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Anything with Paulie

Twelve years since that first day he saw it, and Paulie still finds the sea train one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

It was a miracle.

It still is, but it’s one people take for granted these days. So many people who live here now came with the sea train. To them, the sea train and Water 7 are synonymous. It’s always been here.

Paulie remembers when it wasn’t. When everybody knew it as a miracle.

He doesn’t have too many memories of being twelve, aside from the day he saw the train. Doesn’t have many memories of being ten, or eight, being a child in a sinking city.

There’s not much to remember, as far as he can tell. All his old memories are murky brown. He wandered the streets of a raw, stale town, filled with a haze of hopelessness and violence, because it was better than the hopelessness and violence between the walls of his home.

Water 7 is Water 7 because Water 6 is under the water now, and Water 5 is below that. Once, it was just the glorious city of Water, but it lost some of its glimmer with each successive disaster, each new layer doomed to sink like all the others, each time a little more pointless.

People talked about it, back then. Talked about a glorious city no one alive could possibly remember, and even the stories were tinged grey with hopelessness. A nostalgia for what never was, while the raw wound edges of their home crumbled around their heads.

No one talks about the glorious city of Water anymore. They don’t have to.

These aren’t stories Paulie misses. The sea train came, and it brought hope, for the first time since the first city sank, hope came _back_. And the city is glorious _now_.

The rawness is still there, hiding in the shadows, but the haze of hopelessness is all washed away, and Paulie’s strongest and only memory from his childhood is him standing there at the station and watching new stories be made, watching a miracle in progress.

He knew then and there what he wanted to do with his life. That it was possible to do something with his life, rather than gamble and drink it away.

He still ended up in the gambling dens a lot, admittedly. The dark side of town hasn’t _left_. He still grew up in them. But he isn’t planning to lose his life to them, the way people used to. The way he’s lost others, back before he’s willing to remember.

Twelve years since the day the glorious city of Water 7 made itself great, and the sea train is still beautiful.

He grins, watching it leave the station.

The most beautiful thing on the seas. And they’re making another one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ficlet ended up being expanded into its own one-shot, which can be found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24446449) if you're interested.


	19. Perona, Worth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Perona, worth

_What’s the point if it’s not cute?_ Perona thinks as she rejects the newest suggested addition to her zombie faction.

Things that aren’t cute are worthless.

If it’s no cute, or at least romantically morbid, she doesn’t want it. If it doesn’t look good, it’s worthless.

And worthless things are to be discarded and forgotten.

The world around her should be cute, and pretty, and beautifully melancholic. She won’t have it any other way.

Why would she? Cute things are the only things that have worth, and why would she surround herself with worthless things?

Perona takes meticulous care with the way things around her look, and with herself.

She’s cute. She knows that for absolute certain. She’s pretty, and she has _style_ , and she wouldn’t spend this much time on her makeup if the result wasn’t stunning.

She has worth. She makes sure of it.


	20. Reiju, Compassion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Reiju, compassion

Compassion is an interesting concept, Reiju has always thought.

For twenty years she has tried to define it, but she never gets anywhere. She knows it when she sees it, but she’s not sure how to explain it.

She’s not even sure if it’s an emotion or an action.

She’s not sure if she’s capable of it.

Mom was compassionate, she knows. When Reiju thinks about compassion, she thinks about her mother first.

Her mother, in contrast to her father, and her brothers. Her mother’s soft kindness, as compared to the hard, cold reality she’s faced with elsewhere.

Her mother, as compared to herself.

Sanji, too, is compassionate. Compulsively so, like he can’t help it.

Reiju envies him that, sometimes. When people are hurt, and she looks on blankly, remembering that Mom would have helped, wouldn’t she? Or…

Reiju can’t. She has herself to care for. She doesn’t know how to be compassionate. Not in the moment.

She thinks back on incidents later, can see what was wrong and what she could have done to make things better, can go logically through the steps of kindness, but only in hindsight, when it is already too late to risk herself for others.

Reiju has no skill for compassion, no matter how much she wishes she did. She’s not that kind of person.

She doesn’t know if compassion is an act or a feeling, but either way she doesn’t feel it much, and she never acts on it.

And then there’s Sanji, who should have even less room for others in his heart than she does, but who seems to have made room for everyone.

Reiju can’t define compassion, but she knows she’s no good at it, and she knows he is made of it.

When Father locks Sanji in the dungeon and claims he’s dead, she knows this is wrong.

She doesn’t know if compassion is a feeling or an act, but she guesses that either the act of freeing her brother or the pain that drives her to do so might count.

But she doesn’t know.

Compassion is something you know when you see it, and Reiju never does.


	21. Rebuild, Rebuild

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No prompt, just me thinking about Franky

“How did you do it?” Chopper asks when he gives Franky his first physical as a member of the crew.

As he runs hooves over the seamless transition from muscle to machine, taking in every peculiarity of what Franky’s physiology has now become, while Franky explains what it was he did to himself.

“ _How_ did you do it?” Chopper asks, voice shaking slightly despite his ever-steady hooves. “How did you survive injuries like that? How did you perform surgery on your own hands, or any part of yourself, when you were injured that badly? Surgery is risky enough with a team of specialized doctors in a sterile environment.”

And Franky can’t recall.

He remembers being hit by the train. He remembers the rage that brought him there, the grief and despair bound tight around his reactionary little soul to drive him there. He remembers pain, greater than any he’d felt before and any he’s felt after, making everything else irrelevant.

He remembers the ship, though how he scaled its hull is lost to him.

All he remembers is the pain, and that drive in his chest, refusing to let go, refusing to give up, reaching out, delirious and dying, for anything and everything to let him live.

He remembers being lifted from the water by immaterial hands, but the edge of death is the home of delusion, and in that moment he remembers hearing the ship sing through the waves. He must have climbed, somehow.

_Oh broken builder, build yourself._

Chopper asks how he kept himself alive through the surgery, how he even performed it with his hands shattered, but he doesn’t remember.

He doesn’t remember thinking of his body as something to keep alive.

At the edge of death, the concept of life became blurry. He fell back on his instincts and intuition. The body was broken, so he would scrap and repair.

How could he do a fraction of what he’s done if his eyes were damaged and bleeding? But Franky doesn’t remember seeing.

In his memory, there is only matter and song, the wooden deck below him and the scrap metal scattered around, bright and clear in his awareness. He does not remember needing to see.

He does not remember building his new arms, nor replacing his old ones with them, does not remember scooping out his own innards and rewiring his own frayed nerves.

He remembers broken, shattered pieces being carefully removed, remembers replacing them all with better parts. Remembers waking up, piece by piece, as the steel sang for him, building himself anew.

_Oh broken blacksmith, forge yourself._

“How did you do it?” Chopper asks, but Franky cannot answer, because he knows he was deep in pain and delirium, and the few retained memories are dreamlike and strange.

At the very edge between life and death, he remembers becoming something else, anchored to life by an undying drive, yet falling from his broken body, at the edge, he could feel as the pain grew distant the breath through every solid thing around him, and below that, the song of the spirits.

A broken part of a ship is not part of the ship, it is only something broken that must be replaced, and that is all Franky did.

One piece at a time, at the very edge of death.

_Oh shattered shipwright, your soul is your keel. It is whole, so rebuild, rebuild._


	22. Seastone Bullets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No prompt.

_It happens like this._

Haki, as a rule, senses intent, not literal danger

_It happens like this._

Some clever boy or girl of the marines had an idea, and ran the numbers to make sure.

Some clever boy or girl figured out a way around their worst enemies.

_It happens like this._

Seastone bullets are rare, not unheard of.

A sharpshooter takes aim at a pirate, one of the weaker ones, and fires.

Luffy senses a threat to his crewmate, and catches the bullet, as he always does, sensing only the intent to shoot.

He can’t tell the bullet isn’t lead, because the shooter doesn’t know that every tenth one is something different.

And Luffy goes down.

_It happens like this._

The sharpshooter falls, the tower they’re shooting from cut in half from afar. The gathered marines are scattered and beaten, taken out by lightning and thousands of disembodied arms. A few of the stronger ones stay standing, but not for long.

The crew has no time for playfulness.

Not while their captain is bleeding on the ground.

Luffy can work under seastone influence. He is strong enough for that.

This is different.

The bullet missed his heart, but it tore through his flesh and is lodged in his bones. It sits there, heavy, and his blood turns to seawater.

He is drowning from the inside, every breath is a struggle, and he bleeds.

_It happens like this._

They carry him home.


	23. Rayleigh, Gifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Rayleigh, gifts

Nothing in life is just handed to you.

(Except the things that are.)

Rayleigh knows nothing in life is given for free. All gifts come with strings attached. That’s just how people work.

Which is why he takes what he needs rather than ask for it.

The universe doesn’t hand out presents either. Rayleigh’s house burns down with everything he owned and loved inside, because that’s what the universe gives you, if you turn your back for a second.

So he steals a boat and leaves.

If you want something, you have to take it. Nothing will ever just fall into your lap.

(Except the things that do.)

(Fate is a man in a straw hat.)

There are strings attached to every gift, and Roger was a gift beyond compare. A gift from the universe.

An apology, maybe. Or at least so Rayleigh imagines, on nights that run into mornings, when the only sounds are Roger’s snoring in the back and the wind over the sea. This adventure, this force of nature shaped like a man, might well be the universe’s way to make up for being such a colossal bitch.

Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe it was just one of those gifts with strings that are worth it.

Even after, when Roger is gone and the strings he left behind are cutting into Rayleigh’s core, it was worth it.

Nothing in life is ever handed out for free, and Rayleigh follows that tenet himself. He never does anything for anyone for no reason.

(Except when he does.)

(Fate is a man in a straw hat.)

(A hat, like a gift, with a string attached.)

Teaching Luffy is a gift he gives freely, and a pain in the ass to boot.

And maybe it’s repayment. Or at least so he imagines, on nights that run into mornings, with the kid snoring in the background and the wind in the trees above. Maybe this is how Rayleigh pays back for the gift given to him by Roger’s existence.

Or maybe, just maybe, he was wrong.

Maybe, sometimes, it’s just worth it, to give all you have to someone young enough to do something with it.

Nothing in life is ever just handed to you. That’s the rule.

But fate is a man in a straw hat, and Rayleigh never really gave a shit about rules anyway.


	24. Usopp, Flammable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Usopp, flammable

Pop greens, it turns out, are flammable.

Ridiculously so.

“It’s because they pop-un!” Heracles explains. “It’s so fast they don’t have time to fill with water-un! So they burn just as fast-un!”

It would’ve been very interesting if not for the obvious.

“Couldn’t you have told me earlier!” Usopp shrieks between wheezed breaths as the foliage damn near explodes behind them.

He’s just been trying to avoid one of the sea beasts attracted to the island. He’d thought a flame star would be fine!

He’s lost a lot of weight since he got Luffy’s message, but outrunning a firestorm like this is still beyond him.

“And why do you have a bug?!”

“Un?” Heracles says from on top of the giant flying beetle he’s riding. “Ah, to escape-un.”

“Let me have one too, dammit!”

“You said you wanted to train and get stronger-un?”

“Yeah but I don’t wanna die!”

Usopp nearly stumbles over his feet as the ground below starts to buckle.

“Ah, my apologies-un,” Heracles says. “Nevertheless, the fire will be put out soon-un.”

“What do you-? Fuck!” Usopp yells as the ground abruptly falls.

Ah, the stomach baron is finally reacting to being on fire he realizes.

Knowing what’s happening doesn’t stop him faceplanting in the dirt, nor does it help him scrabble to his feet any quicker.

He’s just in time to see the giant wave as the flower lowers its petals below sea level and floods itself.

“Ababgblbbgbllb,” Usopp says as he’s washed away.

He crashes into something solid and grabs onto it with all his limbs, holding his breath for dear life as the world shifts again.

He’s still barely clinging on when the water falls away.

The island is vertical, all the petals raised to pour sea water through the woods, and Usopp is dangling from a sodden tree trunk.

“Iiiieeeeaaaaahhh!!!” he shrieks as his hands slip and the ground is hundreds of meters below him.

“Usopp-un!”

Usopp flails with three quarters of his limbs. Then he falls, and not a moment later, he’s caught by the claws of a giant beetle.

The Swindling Forest below has a large chunk burnt black, still smouldering. He can smell the smoke from here, burnt wood and charred food, but at least the fire is out.

“Thanks, Heracles,” he says, raising a shaking thumbs-up and otherwise hanging limp.

“It was no trouble at all-un!”

Singed but unharmed, the stomach baron unfurls its petals again, returning the island to its usual state. Heracles lowers Usopp to the ground, where he decides to stay lying down until the adrenaline crash is over.

All is well on the Boin Archipelago.


	25. Sabo, Lies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Sabo, lies

The world is full of liars.

Full of lies, big ones and small ones, good ones and bad ones, and all the liars that tell them.

There’s the “I’m fine”s and the faked smiles and hidden injuries, then there’s deception and manipulation, and then there’s lies that run so deep people believe them to be truths.

Sabo doesn’t know where he got his hatred for liars, but it runs bright and hot.

(This is the cleanest city in the world!)

He hates lies, and he hates liars, and he hates lying most of all.

It’s not the best trait to have in a profession like his, to be incapable of lying, but that’s what he has Koala for. Sabo prefers to leave his thoughts writ clear on his face and to speak his intentions loudly with his fists or his pipe.

The world is full of lies, is rotten with them. Everywhere he looks, there’s untruths erected as gospel for the people.

(We are gods, worship us!)

Sabo’s hate burns bright and hot, and he has no wish to keep it hidden.


	26. Robin, Teacher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: roving teacher Robin

Garla is nine years old and following a stranger out of town.

There aren’t strangers in town very often. She knows there’s visitors from sea sometimes in the neighbouring town, but Garla’s home isn’t so close to the coast, and there’s nothing here for strangers to care about, so this stranger stands out.

She’s a woman, tall and dressed in all black, with a straight fringe across her forehead. She walks through town without talking to anyone, and she has a book in her hand that she looks at before she chooses a road to pick at every crossroads into the woods out of town.

She’s the most interesting thing Garla has ever seen, so of course she follows her.

Garla’s pretty sure she’s careful, so she’s surprised when the stranger turns and says, “You can come out now.”

It can’t really be anyone else she’s talking to, so Garla steps out from behind a tree and says, “Hi I’m sorry for following you.”

The stranger smiles a little, so it’s probably alright.

“Could you help me with something?” the stranger asks.

That’s way more interesting than having to go home, so Garla runs up to the stranger and nods.

The stranger crouches down and points at something in her book. “I’m looking for these. Do you know where I might find them?”

“Oh I can’t read or anything,” Garla says.

The stranger almost looks shocked, which is pretty weird. Most people Garla knows can’t read well.

“I see,” she says. “But that’s okay, there are pictures.”

The pictures in the book aren’t very good, but Garla has seen most of these woods, so even if they’re not drawn very well, she recognizes the weird old rocks with pictures on them and can show the way.

While they’re walking, the stranger says she’s named Robin, and when they get there, Garla sits down on a log while Robin cleans the moss off the rocks to look at the pictures carved into them and starts writing things into a second, smaller book she had in a pocket.

“So are you like, an explorer or something?” Garla asks.

“I’m an archaeologist,” Robin answers.

“Oh. Um, what’s an arclogist do?”

Robin smiles and steps back, gesturing at all the rocks spread around. “We try to learn things about the worlds history from what the people of the past have left behind, especially the kind of history that has long since been forgotten.”

“You’re learning stuff? Are you like a teacher or something?” Garla asks. “Because I think if you’re a teacher, people wouldn’t mind if you’re here. Mom always says it’s a shame we don’t have one of those.”

Robin doesn’t answer that, but she doesn’t look down at her book either. She looks at Garla for a long time before she looks back at the rock.

Oh well. “Does that rock have writing on it?”

“It does,” Robin confirms. “…Do you want to know what it says?”

“Sure!” says Garla.

She learns a lot over the next few hours. She never knew there were people living here before, or anything about what they were like, but Robin can look at the rocks and explain so much about all of it, that they were a colony of a kingdom Garla has never heard of, how they lived and what they ate and what they made their buildings out of, and she makes it all sound so interesting.

She even crouches down and shows Garla how to read some of the pictures on the rocks, explains that they’re actually words, written in an old language. Then she shakes her head and says, “But I suppose it’d be better for you to learn to read a living language,” and she takes out her little book and shows Garla how to write her name.

Garla’s mom isn’t happy when she comes home an hour late, but Robin is still invited for dinner, and then to stay as long as she wants. Robin doesn’t really look happy, but she agrees to stay even so.

Most of the time, she’s in the forest with the ruins, using some really cool abilities to dig more old writing out of the ground, but when she’s not doing that, she’s teaching.

Not just Garla, but all the kids in town, and some of the adults too, showing how to read and write and how to do stuff with numbers, and sometimes she tells stories about ancient kingdoms and stuff that no one knows anymore.

And then one morning, she’s gone.

Garla sits on her log by the ruins, and she wonders if anyone would ever have known what was written on them if Robin didn’t come.

Maybe they would’ve just stayed there forever, a pile of rock that people knew about but didn’t care about.

But Robin cared, and maybe she’s like the rocks too, Garla thinks. Maybe she just needed someone to care about her.

Robin never comes back, but Garla buys a newspaper one day, seven years later, while she’s in the neighbouring town on an errand, and she reads it on her way home.

It talks about a group of pirates, which is always interesting, and it talks about a woman they all cared enough about to burn an island to the ground for.

And Garla thinks it’s about damn time someone did.


	27. Luffy, Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Luffy, flight

Before he wanted to be a pirate, Luffy wanted to be a bird.

In his defence, he was very young, and no one had told him people couldn’t grow up to be animals. All he knew was that birds were free, that they could spread their wings and take off, leaving the ground behind entirely.

Birds could fly, and Luffy was stuck on the ground, too small to even run that fast.

All he knew was that he looked at birds flying away, faster and freer than anything, and he wanted to be one of them.

Luffy wanted, more than anything, to fly.

By the time he’s seven, he knows that’s impossible, of course. Humans can’t become birds, and they certainly can’t fly, and he’s okay with that. Luffy will be free no matter what, even if he still has to deal with gravity.

Ten years later, Luffy stretches his arms out and rockets into the sky.


	28. King

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No prompt, just me thinking about how information spreads.

They call him Pirate King.

Roger laughs and laughs and laughs, because he loves the sound of that.

They call him Pirate King, but who is ‘they’?

It’s certainly not the government, nor the marines. They would rather pirates were shunned as lowly criminals by anyone and everyone. They would never call one _King_.

The media, maybe. It certainly spread the phrase, but the name itself had already been spoken a thousand times before it was ever written.

People talk, wherever you go. They whisper where only their closest can hear, gossip on street corners and weave their tales in pubs and bars. Nothing will spread as fast or be as hard to stop as a good story, and Roger’s is better than most.

He has sailed every sea, is the fact people know. He has sailed every sea, braved every storm, and he has never been defeated.

In the face of every monster in this world, he burns brighter, travels farther. He seems undefeatable.

And his stories travel faster yet, like ripples from each island he passes, they spread and they twist.

He’s sailed every sea, he _owns_ every sea, he’s unbelievably rich and impossibly strong, and more than that, people like him.

He’s a monster like the rest, but where their tales are told in hushed voices on dark evenings, his are told with incredulous grins. “Can you believe it? It’s true, I swear, it’s all of it true.”

He’s gained everything this world has to offer, they say.

Among pirates he shines the brightest. He’s the greatest of them, people say.

He’s the King.

He sits on a mountain of treasure. He sails wherever he damn well pleases.

He’s the king, they decide. He must be.

The stories travel around the world twice before they come back to him, and Roger laughs and laughs and laughs.

And Roger dies.

If you find the One Piece, you become the Pirate King, they say.

But who is ‘they’?

He claimed he left his treasure all in one place.

Everything the world has to offer.

The One Piece. The greatest treasure to ever exist.

It’s impossible to find, they say, telling stories over tavern tables and the decks of a thousand ships.

Laugh Tale is a pipe dream, is a goal so far out of their reach it might as well not exist.

Only Roger ever made it. Only Roger ever could.

Only the Pirate King may even hope to find the place. You’d need to sail every sea, defeat every enemy. No one but the King could do it.

So whoever finds it must be King, is the inevitable conclusion as the stories spread and spread of trial and failure and impossible hopes, as the stories spread and clash and meld, they all reach that same conclusion.

Two years after Roger’s death, and everyone knows.

Whoever finds his treasure will be King. It must be true.


	29. Kiku, Cloudy Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Kiku, cloudy sky

The sky was cloudy when Toki sent them away, grey and heavy, so dark they couldn’t see a hint of stars.

Except it wasn’t.

It was all smoke from the fire, billowing up and choking everything, painting the world black with soot.

Kiku wishes it was clouds hiding the moon that night, not death.

The sky is cloudy a second later too. Twenty years later, when they arrive.

Their home is in weathered ruins around them, and the sky above is heavy and starless, blackened with clouds.

Except it isn’t.

It’s all poison and smoke from the factories, raining down and defiling the very soil of the land.

Kiku wishes it was clouds.

The sky will be cloudy the night they raid Onigashima, heavy and black with storm clouds to match a raging sea.

The waves and wind will wash away every bit of poison in the air, and past the clouds, the moon will still shine bright and clear.

These are the clouds she wishes for.

Under them, her sword will strike as swift and true as lightning.


	30. Usopp, Forgotten Warriors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Usopp, forgotten warriors

“It’s not about being remembered.”

Usopp is tinkering with his weapons, tuning them up and calibrating to make sure they work exactly as they’re supposed to, like he does at least once a week.

He doesn’t feel safe going into a fight if he doesn’t know for sure every shot he makes will be on target, down to the millimetre.

He doesn’t feel safe either way, but he does what he can.

“It’s not about the glory or the honour or any of that, really. It’s just….”

He hesitates for just a moment, and then he goes back to check the last three elastics on the Black Kabuto again, just to be sure he didn’t make a mistake.

“It’s like, history is full of heroes, right? Brave warriors who did great deeds and won amazing treasures and such. Just ask Robin, the stories are everywhere. But they’re just stories, you know?”

That’s not quite right, but he finishes tuning up the Kabuto before he continues talking.

“I mean, they probably existed, most of them. Heroes are real, we both know that, but hero _stories_ aren’t really meant to be true, they’re meant to be fun.”

 _Once upon a time there was a child barely old enough to work, telling tales of incredible feats._ Yeah, Usopp knows how hero stories work.

“Most of the stuff that happens in hero stories probably isn’t true, and more importantly, most heroes don’t ever make it into stories, you know? Because real heroes don’t do it for the stories, they just do what they have to do, and sometimes people tell stories about them, later.”

Usopp has so many devices, and he has to check each of them, one by one. It’s calming. Meditative, even.

“And it’s not like I want to be a hero, exactly. Like, heroes are cool! But I tried that once and it wasn’t really the point. Um, it’s not about being a hero, exactly, I just want to be a warrior, but it’s the same thing. When I was younger, I figured when people were telling stories about me, that’s when I’d be a true warrior of the sea, but then I got older and I don’t think that anymore.”

He doesn’t think of the mask first anymore, when he thinks of Enies Lobby. He thinks of two shots made, one to start a war, and one trying to finish it.

It wasn’t his name on the poster, then, but they were his hands on the weapon.

“It’s about what you fight for, not who sees you do it, and… in the end, it’s always about what you can actually do, when you’re needed. Whether or not you’re remembered or forgotten isn’t really important.”

A single shot in Dressrosa, across a whole country. It’d make for a great story, he knows that.

But it’s not one he can ever tell without choking on the magnitude of what he could’ve lost, and there is no one else who knows to tell it.

And that is okay.

“It’s kind of a weird dream, maybe, but I like it. It suits me, I think. The only one who’ll know for sure if I’ve made it is me, and the only one I’m fighting is myself.”


	31. Kaku, Ocean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Kaku, ocean

The ocean is the best thing Kaku knows. It always has been.

Ever since he was a kid, he’s been finding himself glancing at the sea in the distance and being struck by how _great_ it is. It always makes him smile.

That’s always been the motivation behind his training too. Because the sea is great, but it’s not _safe_ , and it makes him so mad that there are people out there taking that from others.

His motivations expand as he grows older. He doesn’t like criminals in general, doesn’t like people who endanger others, and he’s going to do his best to keep the world a more stable place.

But below all that is the way his heart flutters at the sight of the sea.

Whatever he does with himself, it doesn’t matter. Whether he wins or loses or fights at all, it’s all the same in the end.

The ocean is always there.


	32. Bredliks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Does anyone else remember bredliks? I wrote some for the Straw Hats.

My naym is loof

And wen I see

The horizon

In front of me

And wen the world

Is bearing down

I give a smil

I take my crown

My naym is sword

And wen I stand

On my own legs

On solid land

And were we are

I cannot say

I turn around

I lose my way

My naym is wave

And wen I hear

That klinking sound

From anywere

I don’t care if

It’s hot or cold

I go rite in

I steel the gold

My naym is lie

And wen our fo

Is onse agen

Awake to go

And tek away

All that we’ve got

I keep my hed

I take the shot

My naym is snooj

And wen I fite

I kick my feet

Wit all my mite

And wen they tink

That I am thru

I smil and say

Go eat my shu

My naym is deer

And wen ur ill

I will use all

My doktor skill

But if u do

Not stay in bed

Then I will tie

U up instead

My name is rob

And wen I read

I’m tinking of

The life I lead

It’s dangerus

That I have stayd

But I’m at home

I’m not afraid

My naym is frank

And evry day

Wit all my little

Frends I play

And if men come

To stop out fun

I do not care

I’m made of gun

My naym is brook

And if there’s sno

Or sun or rain

Or fog down lo

Or if the storm

Eats everyting

I let it pass

I only sing

My naym is fish

And wen I come

Onto the ship

That I’ll call home

And wen I meet

My crew to be

They smil and laf

And welkom me

My naym is ship

And I will sail

Rite thru the waves

And wit the gale

I am alon

But I am brave

Becaus I hav

My crew to save

My naym is sun

And I am young

But I am also

Very strong

For in my hart

I’m not alon

She is wit me

And she has flown


	33. Robin, Rosemary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Robin, rosemary

There’s a flowerbed on the thousand sunny, just beside Nami’s mikan trees.

It’s for Robin.

She puts her hands to the cold, dark dirt in some kind of disbelief. There is a flowerbed, and it is hers.

This place is something to put roots into. Flowers. It’s so _frivolous_.

It’s for her.

She gathers seeds and plants as they travel, to bring back to the ship. To bring home.

She can trust she has the time to let them grow.

Robin looks for flowers now, when they land at a new island. Looks for life.

She finds a little green herb sold at a corner in a small town, alongside other spices. Rosemary. It smells like her aunt’s kitchen. It smells like a house and a home.

It’s something more useful than beautiful, but it has its own beauty.

It’s something they will all enjoy, if she tells Sanji he can take from it if he needs.

Robin digs her hands into cold, dark soil that smells like life, plants flowers and spices and herself.


	34. Nami, Wonder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Nami, wonder

The world is full of wonders.

They’re hard to see sometimes, when Nami is so focused inside herself, tunnel-vision zooming in on only what’s right in front of her, the next step, the next minute. Sometimes that is all she can bear.

But even then, sometimes, she finds the space to look up and watch the wonders of the world.

Gleaming islands on a glittering horizon, a blue sea at day glowing at night, the clouds above forming glorious cities.

Sometimes she finds the room to breathe, and to remember why capturing all of this world on paper was her dream, is still her dream.

Luffy is a wonder, she thinks as he rises from the ruins of Arlong Park.

Like cities of glass and sunsets on fire, like the very ocean itself, he’s a wonder.

The world is full of them, yet he’s the most wonderous she’s seen, and she will go with him to see all of them.


	35. Once the World Was Simpler Than This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No prompt, just me speculating about Garp

There was a time when the world seemed simpler than this.

When Garp was younger, he never had to hesitate. The road ahead was clear.

When he was younger, there were the good guys and the bad guys, the ones he fought against and the ones he fought beside, villains and heroes. It was simple.

And maybe he didn’t always get why some of his comrades made the choices they did, they lived their own lives and he would live his. And maybe he didn’t always like some of the orders he was given, but there were never consequences for ignoring them that he wasn’t willing to take.

And maybe some of the people he fought were worth fighting not because they were evil, but because they were fun in a dangerous way, but Garp would never mind a good fight with a worthy opponent.

Life was easier back then.

Everything was easier before God Valley.

Before the day enemies became trusted allies, and those bastards meant to be allies could no longer be ignored.

The world seems more complicated these days.

There are still villains worth fighting out there, still friends worth fighting beside, but….

But there are children running along the tracks he ran as a child. There are monsters at his back he cannot fight.

And the world is oh so dangerous.


	36. Wanda, Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Wanda, midnight

It’s been years and years since Wanda last saw midnight.

For years and years, she’s woken at six in the morning, on the dot, and gone to bed at six in the evening, on the dot. Midnight was a distant dream.

She never thought it bothered her much. She wished the kings of night and day would stop fighting, wished she would be able to meet her compatriots of the night again outside of disasters, but sleeping through midnight was never something she dwelled on.

Wanda is adaptable. If sleeping twelve hours a day is the only solution, she’ll take it without question. It’s been her life for so long, and she’s never found it difficult to handle.

But….

It’s midnight. Their kings are dancing arm in arm, unconcerned with the conflict that’s kept them apart for so long, brought together again by new and old friends.

It’s midnight, and Wanda looks up to the sky above.

She’d forgotten how much she could miss the stars.


	37. Chopper, Distance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Chopper, distance

Chopper has never been this far away from home before.

Home used to be Drum Island, with the herd, with Hiluluk, with Kureha, on the snow-covered plains, in a cave, a treehouse, a castle. Home was always somewhere on the island, and he was always somewhere on the island. He walked around, but he was always somewhere he knew how to get home from by walking, at most a day or two.

When he sailed out, away from Drum, it felt a little like leaving home, but mostly it felt like moving again. The ship was home now.

Merry was home, and she was _tiny_. He could never get much more than a good dozen meters from the place he slept.

Even getting off and walking around on islands, he never got far from home. She was always there, at the coast, waiting for them.

Until she wasn’t.

Enies Lobby was the farthest he’d ever been from home, deep into enemy territory, and even there, home came for them.

After, when Merry was gone, he felt homeless, felt far from home.

But he wasn’t, of course. Even then, he was together with his crew, and the crew will always be his true home. He was never far from them.

And then Sunny was home, and as with Merry, he was never far from her.

But now….

He’s far, far up in the giant central island tree of Birdie Kingdom, gathering herbs that can only be found in the highest branches. Looking out, the ocean stretches for miles upon endless miles around him.

It’s a long way down, and Chopper has never been this far away from home.


End file.
